Lenovo IdeaPad Y560

The Lenovo Ideapad Y560 is a multimedia laptop available with several different option packages. This wiki will focus on support for as many variations as possible.
At the time of writing, the Ideapad Y560 is available with the following options:

CPU:
Intel® Core™ i3-370M Processor ( 2.40GHz 1066MHz 3MB )

Intel® Core™ i5-460M Processor ( 2.53GHz 1066MHz 3MB )

Intel® Core™ i7-720QM Processor ( 1.60GHz 1333MHz 6MB )

Intel® Core™ i7-740QM Processor ( 1.73GHz 1333MHz 6MB )

Screen:
15.6” (1366×768) Widescreen

Memory:
Up to 8GB ram

Graphics:
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730

Contents

Initial Installation

Lenovo's default partitioning scheme thankfully included an extended partition. Using a utility such as gparted, it is recommended to shrink your windows partitions to at least half the size of the drive and increase the extended partition to fill in the gap, then installing Arch within new logical partitions inside. Installing the bootloader to /dev/sda will allow it to boot into all of the operating systems, though you will need to chainload windows (chainloader +1 boot option, see the Beginner's Guide for an example.

Graphics

The Lenovo Ideapad Y560's ATi 5730 graphics card works very well with both the open-source Radeon driver and the proprietary Catalyst driver, though their are minor performance differences to note:

Catalyst: Decent 2D performance, stock settings appear to work fine. 3D acceleration performance is highest with this driver, though 2D accelerated performance is not quite as good as the open-source driver. Noticeable performance reduction in fullscreen video performance (both applications such as VLC and web-based videos such as flash videos from sites like YouTube.

Radeon: Superb 2D and 2D accelerated performance, as well as decent 3D performance (though not as good as Catalyst). Fullscreen video is fine, and image-rendering programs/GPU-intensive applications tend to work well (with exception of 3D games, though this is under active development and so may have changed since the writing of this article).

Both drivers support overclocking, though the benefit of doing so on the Ideapad is negligible compared to the potential damage that can be done to the system, as the card will idle at about ~50-60C and can easily overheat due to the poor cooling system designed by Lenovo. [note: Admiralspark]

Catalyst

catalyst-daemonAUR is the recommended package to install, as it will pull in catalyst-utilsAUR as well, and will auto-recompile the kernel every time it is updated.
You will want to add the autofglrx daemon to your /etc/rc.conf daemons array:

DAEMONS=(autofglrx syslog-ng dbus ...)

This will run every boot, taking ~40 milliseconds to check if the module needs to be recompiled. This will preserve multiple fglrx modules for multiple kernels.
Once installed, you will need to configure the xorg.conf. Fortunately, a simple way to do this exists that will work with the 5730 without modification:

aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf

Now reboot, and check operations with applications like glx-gears, glxinfo, etc.
See the main Catalyst article for reference and more complete instructions.

Note: If you are planning to use Gnome3, the 3D rendering effects are still experiencing issues as of Catalyst 12.2, 4/21/2012. The Radeon driver is recommended.

Radeon

uDev will automatically load the correct driver, and no further xorg configuration is necessary.
However, there is a problem on our machines with the default behavior of Radeon. The ATi driver will default to full clock, or its highest speed setting. This will cause the machine to run very hot, causing it to overheat and lock up/BIOS forced shutdown at 100C under any decent CPU load, as they share a single copper heatsink that cannot cool both units fast enough. The solution is to use dynamic clock speeds (much like the kernel's ondemand governor), which will keep the GPU in a low-speed state until needed, also preserving battery life:

Networking

Wireless

As of Kernel 3.2.x, wireless works out-of-the-box with the iwlwifi driver.

Ethernet

There is a bug in the kernel which causes the tg3 module to load before broadcom, rendering the Intel Ethernet adapter useless. To fix, you will need to change the following lines in your /etc/rc.conf:

MODULES=(broadcom tg3)

Now the ethernet interface, eth0, should load without issue.

The Linux-Ideapad Kernel

The linux-ideapadAUR kernel is optimized for the Lenovo Y5xx laptops, though it should work on any laptop that uses the same chipset as the Ideapad.
Includes all changes from the parent package by graysky linux-ckAUR, as well as:

Ideapad switchable graphics (non-i7 models that included the intel integrated graphics card with the ATi/nVidia)

other small tweaks for performance, constantly being updated. Suggestions should be left on the linux-ideapadAUR page.

Sound

ALSA works fine with the sound card, using the snd_hda_intel module. However, uDev does not automatically mute the speakers when a headset is plugged in, and will need to be scripted or done manually through alsamixer.

Touchpad

You will want to edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf file, as root, and replace the contents with the following options: